Search Results for: antibiotic

Although I’m all on board with awareness, and its goal (reducing resistance evolution in bacteria), I think the people at the CDC are actively ignoring an insanely easy way to educate the public: simply stop using the word “antibiotic,” and instead say “antibacterial”. E.g., people at the CDC should open up all their Word documents and web pages and do a global search/replace. Would take a week to fix the formatting changes caused by the extra characters. The cost of doing this would probably be much less than what they spend getting all those cartoons for their posters on antibiotics.

The reason I suggest this is that most people assume antibiotics work against viruses. And who can blame them? It’s what the word use to mean. Below is a sample definition from 1910:

and here’s what a Google search displays:

Of course, the CDC loves the word “antibiotics.” And thus it would take an Executive Order to get them to do what I suggest. But if you agree with me and eventually become President, could you please consider sending them that memo?? You’d make me happy, and save a lot of lives.

In my ongoing quest to show that “antibiotic” is a word that does more harm than good to public health outreach, I frequently encounter people on the Internet who insist that confusion over antibiotic efficacy is not due, at all, to the word itself. I value these people’s insight, of course, because their views certainly might be true for the planet they live on. There are probably a lot of habitable planets in the Universe (40 billion just in our galaxy!), and I don’t presume to know what reality is like for those places.

On Earth, however, the belief that antibiotics treat viruses is rampant, generates over-prescription, and is clearly related to the word itself. Here are Exhibit A (from answers.com) and Exhibit B (from Google definitions):

People believe that antibiotics treat viruses because on Earth we regularly use a word’s roots to infer meaning. So for the average person who doesn’t remember any biology from middle school, parsing the meaning of antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, etc. is easy … as long as he/she knows what anti-, viral, bacterial, and fungal mean. But that same trick doesn’t work for antibiotic. And because people don’t realize their inference is incorrect, the misconception becomes forever entrenched in public opinion, and on the internet. The CDC (and others) waste millions of dollars each year trying to quash the misconception, but such efforts will always fail because the strength of the “antibiotics” misnomer is always truthier to the average Joe than a bunch of patronizing posters on a doctor’s waiting room wall.

[As an aside, misnomers are words (you can probably guess, based on the roots … if you live on Earth) that deliver an incorrect meaning. “Pencil lead” (two words, of course) is a great example, and there are thousands of parents each year who call their doctors in a panic after Jimmy gets stabbed during math class with a pencil. Or they search the internet for “pencil lead poisoning“. Luckily, pencil lead is graphite (always has been), a harmless crystal of carbon that is not going to cause Jimmy to be developmentally delayed.]

So how bad a misnomer is “antibiotics”? How should physicians decide whether to use “antibiotics” or “antibacterials” when discussing treatment of illnesses? Like any medical question, the decision should be evidence-based. Here is how to get the evidence (Pew Research Center folks, this means you):

Responses for questions #1 and #2 show that approximately 10% and 36% (pdf) of adults are confused about the correct answers, respectively. That’s a HUGE fraction given the daily importance of bacteria and viruses in our lives and in the news. Unfortunately, there are no poll data for #3 and #4. But my guess is that the fraction of incorrect responses for #3 and #4 will be 1% and 5%, respectively. “Antibacterials” clearly suggests the drug kills bacteria — only people unfamiliar with English might be clueless. And I’m guessing that 5% of the public think viruses are bacteria (I’ve asked dozens of virologists … and none knew of poll data on classification ignorance). No matter what the actual numbers, the level of confusion for “antibacterials” is going to be dramatically less than that caused by “antibiotics.”

So if you are a doctor hoping to improve patient understanding and patient care, using “antibacterials” is a no-brainer. And if you are worried that “antibacterial” is a rare word, stop worrying: it’s from the 1890s (that’s old!) and is found 13,200,000 times on the internet (that’s less than the 23.8 million for “antibiotic”, but still totally respectable). Don’t wait for the CDC, WHO, AMA, ACP, APA, etc. to recommend the change, because chances are they won’t — they love the word, “antibiotic” (I’ve emailed them all, trust me). So just tell your colleagues and staff on the floor to get on board. And then let me know how it goes.

Below are my other posts on the topic, if you need further convincing. All posts have graphics that you are encouraged to use for your talks on the topic (this week is Antibiotic Awareness Week, after all). Please consider sharing these links with others on Twitter and Facebook if you are on board with my suggestion, and if you can forward to impressionable medical students, you get bonus points.

[If you’re curious why I am so interested in this issue, it’s because I witnessed, first-hand, confusion over “antibiotics” when I lectured on antibacterial resistance in my evolution courses at Swarthmore College. My students were (largely) bright, and were often bound for medical school … yet they frequently made the same incorrect assumptions about efficacy that totally uneducated people make. Misuse of “antibiotics” became one of my pet peeves. Because I have a blog, I thought it would be worth a try to effect some change.]

Just a little graphic (for “Antibiotics work against viruses” post) demonstrating how people’s brains work when they are ill with cold or flu. When an average person hears “antibiotics,” they envision a wonder drug that can kill viruses in addition to bacteria (i.e., they are both really small things that make us miserable). Use “antibacterial,” instead, folks.

People with higher degrees tend to think that my suggestion is pure lunacy, that “antibiotics” is the best. word. ever. Yet those same people think evolution of resistant bacteria is a catastrophic problem fueled by public misunderstanding of what “antibiotics” treat and don’t treat. That over-educated people don’t make the connection to a simple solution is odd to me. It makes me suspect that the people and organizations who ostensibly fret over antibacterial resistance just want to spend money on harder solutions, the kind that make news. Is there anyone at CDC, FDA, WHO, etc. who might champion this suggestion?? All it would take is an email memo to all staff, plus a few days of search-replace edits for the relevant documents. ** More than one third of people think that “antibiotics” work against viruses … this belief is a low-hanging fruit in the whole battle of science literacy.**

New recommendations for reducing the number of patients demanding antibacterials for viral infections:

1. Remove all of the educational signage that is currently in your waiting room. It doesn’t work (more evidence), probably because most posters are targeted at elementary school brains. The average adult in the United States reads with the understanding of an 8th grader, so posters should be designed for that level, or above. What you put in your waiting room really does matter, and you (the doctor) should dictate this, not your interior decorator or office manager, even though they might have strong opinions on the matter. And be critical of all the glossy posters you can receive for free from health organizations — I’ve looked at hundreds, and the vast majority are simply awful. They should spend their money on something else.

2. Consider replacing the above posters with the document below (it’s free!). Here’s the PDF version for printing: anti-infectives-poster.pdf. Make the poster large. Place copies in the examination rooms, too. It introduces your waiting patients to the vocabulary you will use later. It will prime their brains.

3. After patient examination, how you deliver the diagnosis matters. After you tell them that they have a viral infection (flu, cold, etc.), mention that one treatment option is an antiviral (Tamiflu, for example). Saying “antiviral” is critical — it’s a word used in many television shows and movies so the public knows it. Mention why you think their infection is not bacterial. They came to office hoping to get antibacterials, so you know you have to bring it up. If they mention “what about antibiotics?,” respond that antibacterials only work against bacteria, and point to the wall chart above. I.e., use “antibacterial” not “antibiotic.” In the United States, 36% to 45% of adults believe that “antibiotics” are effective at treating viral infections (outside of the US, the number is higher). Using the word, “antibacterial” avoids this problem, completely, since people understand what the word means just given its roots. Training yourself to stop using the word “antibiotics” will be hard, but it’s worth it — the word is a big source of the over-prescription problem.

The above is my recommendation, of course. Everyone else on the planet insists on sticking with the word “antibiotics” and with patronizing, bloated signage that most likely is never read. My view is that these old strategies have not really been working, and it’s time to try something different. For more on how linguistic “levers” might reduce patient’s demands for antibacterials, see this paper (PDF).